Santa-Dolph
by PossumSoul
Summary: Castle-inspired Christmas one-shot: Lily has some fun playing dress-up with Daddy on Christmas Eve and Kate can't wait to give him her Christmas present.


A couple of years ago, she would have killed the person telling her to put these socks on. She hates toe socks. She hates themed clothing. She hates holiday clothing.

But here she is, putting on bright red toe socks with green and white candy canes on them onto her feet. She's even happy about it. But this time of year, she has a lot to be happy about. It tends to catch her off guard when she thinks about it all at once.

Christmas Eve evening and she can hear the sound of the family coming from the living room. Her dad's soft, humble chuckle under her mother-in-law's bright, rambunctious laugh. Her husband has been remarkably quiet since he disappeared upstairs to fetch Lily for dinner. They agreed to exchange presents in the morning when everybody was due over for Christmas breakfast, but she can't wait anymore. She's been having to keep herself away from him ever since the appointment just to keep from telling him.

Kate wiggles her toes, rolls her eyes, and lets her happiness shine through her face. Rick _claims _they were Lily's idea, but she's fallen for that too many times to believe him. On a content sigh, she stands up off their bed in her new toe socks, jeans, and loose-fitting tan sweater, grabbing the tan envelope that contains his Christmas gift.

Kate smiles as she strolls out of their bedroom and into his office, looking through the bookshelves to see her parents conversing happily with Alexis in the kitchen. With snow falling outside and Christmas music playing on the Pandora radio station in the living room, Kate moves to his desk and sets the folder down, but stops when something hanging from the ceiling catches her eye.

Her smile falls and she's overtaken by confusion at what she sees hanging from a string in the center of his office. She blinks and her brow furrows. This has her husband written all over it, because hanging from the ceiling is a large, two-inch long, plastic toe with red paper fins taped to the sides and an orange triangle flayed in the back to look like fire taped to the back.

"Mommy!" Lily calls from the door. Kate turns quickly at the sound of her Lily's voice. "Mommy! Lookie!"

Kate looks first at Lily, who's perched in between Daddy's legs, standing on his feet and hanging onto the bag of his thighs with a proud smile. When she looks up at her husband, she snorts in laughter, her heart exploding at what she sees. "Ohhhh..." she giggles, doubling over, "honey, what..." she says over another fit of giggles, putting her hand over her smile, "what happened?"

Standing in the doorway with his hands on his hips, posing proudly, is her husband of just over four years wearing a bright red Santa Clause jacket, stuffed haphazardly with a couch pillow, a pair of bottoms that look as if it's the bottom half of a horse costume judging by the brown fabric and stitching on the bottom to look like hoves, wearing a Santa Clause beard on his face, a bright red round nose, an electronic Santa hat waving from side to side, and in front of it, a pair of light-up antlers.

"Mommy, like it?" Lily asks, bouncing up and down excitedly on Daddy's feet.

"What..." she tries, still giggling at the sight of her husband and his little girl's handiwork, "what happened?"

Rick takes his hands from his hips and quirks his eyebrow in a cocky, braggadocious fashion, strolling through the office as best he can while letting his little girl ride on his feet. "Well," he starts, the beard bobbing back and forth, "Lily couldn't decide if she wanted Daddy to dress up as Santa Clause or Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer for Christmas so," he smiles underneath the fake beard, his eyes crinkling, and puts his hands on his little girl's head, "genius Lillian Castle and her genius father came up with an idea."

Her chest erupts in another fit of silent giggles as she watches the two of them. "And what's that?"

"I present to you..." he says, the Santa hat still bobbing from side to side and the antlers still flashing, his red nose still glowing, poses again with his hands on his hips, "Santa-dolph."

"_Phwaha!" _Kate explodes for a moment, laughing out loud and doubling over as she leans back against his desk.

"Santa-dof, Mommy!" Lily bounces excitedly.

Kate cranes her neck back as she's doubled over against his desk, looking at her little girl bursting with happiness and pride at what her and Daddy have accomplished. "I _love _it, Lily bug." She says, softly grabbing her daughter's cheeks and kissing her on the head. She stands back up and smiles up at her husband, who wags his eye brows at her. "You should be very proud."

"Mmhmm," Santa-Dolph hums as he shuffles toward his wife, "Santa-Dolph is a Lily Castle original." He says in a low voice, taking his wife's hand. "Not only do I guide the presents through the foggy Christmas Eve night, I deliver them too. I'm like... the Swiss Army Knife of Christmas."

"Rick," she starts with a smile. He motions with a lift of his brow, everything still flashing and moving on him, and watches as she points up to the ceiling. "What's this?"

Rick looks up at the plastic toe hanging from the ceiling of his office, then looks back to her obviously. "That's the missile toe."

"_Phfb-" _Kate chuckles through tightened lips, letting the joke get the better of her before she looks back over to her smiling husband with an eye roll. "That is _not _what that means, Hun."

"Well, the tradition still remains, Mrs. Castle." He wags his brow, letting Lily slip out from between his legs and go off into the living room with her grandparents. "You know what happens when you're caught underneath the missile toe." He says with a wag of his brow, the Santa Clause beard still stiff and bobbing as he speaks.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Santa-Dolph," she raises her brow, putting her hands on the couch pillow the suit is stuffed with, letting him envelope her with his arms, "I'm a happily married woman."

"_Happily _married, hmm?" He asks.

"Mmm," she hums with a smile, lazily leaning back against the edge of his desk.

"This morning, it was just married."

"That's because you ate a third of the family Christmas cookies that I finally got my Aunt Theresa to cough up the recipe to."

"Have you met your own mother-in-law? It's not too often I get home baking that's actually edible."

"Well, Santa-Dolph," she says and puts her hand on the envelope. "I wanted to give you your Christmas present a little early this year, but uh..." she says, turning back around with her hand still on the desk, "I'd like to be speaking to my husband, if you don't mind."

She sees him smile as he lazily pins her against the edge of the desk, reaching up and pulling the antlers, Santa hat, setting them on the desk behind her and pulling off the nose and beard, setting them on the other side behind her.

"Ready?"

Rick smirks, "Don't you think we should be doing this tomorrow morning?"

"I can't wait any longer." She shakes her head, her hand getting antsy as it sits on top of the envelope.

"Okay, if it will make you happy," he says with a shrug.

"Trust me," she says and presents him with the sealed envelope, "I'm ecstatic."

He smiles and pinches his brow in curiosity. "What's this?" He asks, taking the envelope from her.

"Open it," she says in an excited, small voice.

With a soft smile, he pulls at the top of the envelope, unsealing it with his finger and starts to pull out the laminated photo. When he sees the first parts of the photo, his expression falls. "No, Kate, we promised." He lets the envelope fall to his side. "I don't want to know what you're having. All I want to know is if it's healthy." He says, putting a soft, gentle hand on the side of her stomach.

"Just-" she starts, almost frustratingly, "look-at-it." She punches her words, grabbing his wrist and pulling his hand back up.

On a hard sigh, he pulls the photo out and flips it over on top of the envelope, looking over it with a blank expression. Kate pulls her smile back as much as she can, waiting to jump him with how excited she is. When the casual purse of his lips fall and his eyes start to widen, she knows he saw the two circles on the ultrasound picture, along with the two paper tabs pointing to them.

He looks back up to her with wide eyes. "Kate, is this-"

"Mmhmm." She nods to him excitedly.

Rick breathes out a large breath, looking back down to the picture with a bright, taken aback smile. "Two of them?"

"Mmhmm." She hums again, her smile getting harder and harder to fight.

"We're having twins?"

"Mmhmm!" She hums again.

He takes her in his arms and hugs her as tightly as he can, her arms going around his neck and her face burying in his neck, laughing against him as happily as she can, hearing him breathe into her ear shakingly. "This is incredible."

She reaches up and puts her hands on his jaw, pulling him in and kissing him passionately, holding his lips to her as tightly as she can, eventually moving her hands up into his hair and her arms around his neck, never breaking their kiss until her smile gets too big to fight.

Resting her forehead against him, overwhelmed at the news of their twin children, "Merry Christmas, Rick."

He reaches up and cups her jaw, petting her cheek. "Merry Christmas, Kate."

* * *

_A/N: Merry Chrismas :]_


End file.
